The same data, three times
An order arrives by email, gets typed into a spreadsheet, then typed again into the accounts. Nobody designed it that way. It accumulated, one reasonable decision at a time.
Business process review
Your business has outgrown the way it runs.
The re-typing, the chasing, the software nobody has opened in months: it all costs money, and most owners have never worked out how much. We put a figure on it, show the arithmetic behind that figure, and then design the system that stops it.
- Remote worldwide
- On-site in South Africa and Korea
- A fixed quote before any work starts
You already know where it hurts
You just have not been given a number for it. These are the three we find in almost every company that has outgrown its spreadsheets.
Nobody can find the current version
Work is tracked across documents that one or two people really understand. Ask where a particular job has got to and somebody loses an afternoon finding out.
Software you stopped using
Seats for people who left. Two tools doing one job. A platform bought for a single feature. It leaves your account every month whether anyone opens it or not.
This is not a compliance audit
A process audit checks whether you are following your own rules. That is a different job, and not a useful one if the rules are the problem. We are looking for something else: the places where the work is slow or expensive, and the places where a system should be doing it instead.
- We watch the work as it is actually done, rather than as the manual describes it or as anyone remembers it.
- We count. Time per task comes from watching it happen. Volume comes from your own records, so it is your invoice count rather than our guess. Cost is what the person actually costs you.
- We show the arithmetic. Every figure in the report can be checked, or argued with. A number you cannot reproduce is a number you will not act on.
- We say when the answer is cheap. Sometimes it is cancelling licences and buying one small tool. That goes in the report exactly as readily as a build would.
Two documents, and they are yours
Both are covered by the review fee. The second only exists when building something is genuinely worth it.
The Business Process Review
Where your time and money are going, task by task. What each one costs a year, how we arrived at that, and which of them are worth changing first.
The Solution Proposal
What the system would do, screen by screen: what each one captures, what it updates and who it tells. It is detailed enough for any competent developer to quote from without re-interviewing your staff, and it carries an indicative cost so you can weigh the build against the saving.
And then it is yours
You own both documents. If you would rather somebody else built it, take them to whoever you like. They are written to be used that way on purpose.
How it works
Nothing begins until you have agreed a fixed number. There is no hourly billing and no open-ended engagement.
Free, 30 minutes
The first call
What is going wrong, which part of the business to look at, and how much of your team's time we would need. No preparation required.
A few days later
An estimate
A price range and a timescale, in writing. Enough for you to decide whether this is worth continuing, before anyone has committed to anything.
Before any work
A fixed quote
We go through the detail, then quote one exact number. You know the full cost before we start, and it does not move.
Two to three weeks
The review, then the report
We sit with your team while they work, pull the volumes from your systems, and come back with the documents and a walkthrough call.
See one before you buy one
Most people have never commissioned a review like this and cannot picture what arrives at the end of it. So we published a worked example: a fictional wholesale business, one observed task, the volumes, the arithmetic, and what we would have recommended.
- Fifteen years in software, including at Microsoft and GitHub. The person who reviews your business is the person you spoke to on the call, not a junior assigned after signature.
- No jargon in the report. If a recommendation cannot be explained to the person who has to live with it, it is not finished.
- Vendor-neutral by construction. We are not reselling anyone's platform, so there is no product we need the answer to be.
What this means for your staff
The quiet worry about bringing someone in to watch your staff is that it looks like the prelude to cutting them. So, plainly:
- No finding is about an individual's performance. We are examining the system people have been handed, not how hard they are trying inside it. Nothing in the report names anyone.
- Your team are where the answers come from. They already know where the friction is. Usually nobody has asked them.
- About 45 minutes each, usually while they are doing the job rather than sitting in a meeting room. Negotiable, depending on the kind of work.
- An NDA before you ask for one. Nothing we see leaves this company, and we will tell you what we take away, where it is kept, and when it is destroyed.
- If we cannot measure something accurately, you hear it in the first week, not in the report. Where your records will not support a figure, we say so, and we say what it would take to fix.
If the numbers are not there yet
A review is only as good as the records behind it. Some businesses cannot answer basic questions about their own operations: how many jobs they did last month, how long those took, what they earned. That is its own piece of work, and you can buy it on its own.
If you want us to build it
That is a separate engagement with a separate quote. The review is a finished product on its own, and it is not a deposit on anything.
- We are usually the quickest quote you will get, because we wrote the specification and already know your systems. That is the whole of our advantage, and we think it should be.
- Our implementation quote stands for six months. If the processes we reviewed are changed by someone else in the meantime, the design no longer matches the business and we would need to re-check before standing behind the price.
- Nothing is credited back. The review is billed and kept regardless of who ends up building the solution. A refundable fee would make the report a sales document, and you would be right to read it that way.
Questions
What does it cost?
There is no list price, because a six-person company and a sixty-person company are not the same job. What we can promise is the shape: a free call, then an estimated range, then one fixed number agreed before any work starts. No hourly billing, and no invoice you did not see coming.
Do you always end up recommending custom software?
No. If the answer is to cancel eleven unused seats and move one spreadsheet into a tool that costs forty pounds a month, that is what the report says. Where several options are reasonable we lay them out and let you choose. It is the cheap recommendations that make the expensive ones worth believing.
Can we take the report to another developer?
Yes, and it is written so that you can. The solution proposal is detailed enough for someone else to quote from without re-interviewing your staff. If a competitor gives you a better price on the same specification, take it.
Where do you work?
Remotely, anywhere English-speaking. Desk work is entirely observable over a screen share, and we work your hours rather than ours. We also work on-site in South Africa and with English-speaking businesses in Korea.
What if our reporting is too poor to measure anything?
It happens, and we would rather find out early. Often we can count a week of real transactions by hand and extrapolate, which is cheaper and more accurate than fixing the system that failed to record them. Where that is not enough, we will tell you in the first week and propose reporting work as a separate piece.
How much of our time will this take?
About 45 minutes with each person whose work we review, usually spread across a week and usually while they are working rather than in a meeting. You will not lose a fortnight of productivity to it.
Book a call
Tell us roughly what is going on. We reply within one business day and set up 30 minutes at a time that suits you. Pick whatever hour works where you are and we will make it work.
- [email protected]
- Where we work
- Remote worldwide. On-site in South Africa and Korea.